[WASHINGTON] President-elect Joe Biden convened a task force on Monday to devise a blueprint for tackling the coronavirus pandemic in the United States and hailed progress on a vaccine, while President Donald Trump steadfastly refused to acknowledge his defeat.

Mr Biden conferred in Delaware by video link with the 13-member task force that he named, headed by former US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner David Kessler and Yale University healthcare equity expert Marcella Nunez-Smith.

Two days after clinching victory over the Republican president, the Democratic former vice president is set to give remarks in Wilmington, Delaware, about his plans to address the pandemic that has killed more than 237,000 Americans and to rebuild the economy.

Mr Biden labelled as "great news" Pfizer's announcement on Monday that its experimental Covid-19 vaccine was more than 90 per cent effective.

Pfizer and German partner BioNTech are the first drugmakers to release successful data from a large-scale clinical trial of a vaccine for the novel coronavirus.

But Mr Biden said it would be "many more months before there is widespread vaccination" in the United States and underscored the importance of wearing protective masks and social distancing.

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"Americans will have to rely on masking, distancing, contact tracing, hand washing and other measures to keep themselves safe well into next year. Today's news is great news, but it doesn't change that fact," Mr Biden said in a statement.

Mr Biden traveled from his home to the Queen Theater in Wilmington, where he and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris spoke to the task force experts. The United States has been registering record high infection numbers in recent days.

"I will be informed by science and by experts," Mr Biden said in a statement before the meeting.

The task force will liaise with local and state officials to consider how to safely reopen schools and businesses and tackle racial disparities.

The Biden panel includes Rick Bright, a whistleblower who says he was removed from his Trump administration post for raising concerns about coronavirus preparedness, and Luciana Borio, who specialises in complex public health emergencies.

REUTERS